<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>time is taking its sweet time erasing you by GilbertsMangoes</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29782758">time is taking its sweet time erasing you</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/GilbertsMangoes/pseuds/GilbertsMangoes'>GilbertsMangoes</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>when you're close I feel like coming undone [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Gilmore Girls</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, First Love, Literati, Love, POV Second Person, Pining, Second Chances, Soulmates, i love them, jess is always going to be in love with rory, only love</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 02:29:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,365</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29782758</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/GilbertsMangoes/pseuds/GilbertsMangoes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>'Loving her was a funny thing, so full of innocent whimsy and fiery passion and a delicious, reverent kind of pain that made you fall to your knees like a sinner at confession. You didn’t mind because as much as you denied it, you’d go to the ends of the Earth and back for that girl.'</p><p>After Rory rejects his desperate plea at Yale, Jess gets lost in reverie for a moment.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Rory Gilmore/Jess Mariano</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>when you're close I feel like coming undone [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2217678</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>time is taking its sweet time erasing you</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Loving her was a funny thing, so full of innocent whimsy and fiery passion and a delicious, reverent kind of pain that made you fall to your knees like a sinner at confession. You didn’t mind because as much as you denied it, you’d go to the ends of the Earth and back for that girl.</p><p>The girl you’d always consider your girl after everything, the girl with the ice blue eyes and the molten chocolate hair and porcelain peach tinted skin that told you every day how smart, how capable, how amazing you were.</p><p>You loved no one more than her in the seven all too short months before you had fucked it all up, denying her the last of many things she had expected of you.</p><p>So many expectations of you when you came to Stars Hollow, and yet somehow everyone always assumed you’d let them down from the very beginning. It was what you were best at. </p><p>For months, you had tried to fade into the background of the insanity plea of a place because she loved it and you loved her, but small town minds were perhaps as closed off as your heart was. </p><p>You should’ve known you could never make it work with someone like Rory, someone whose little exposure to dark parts of the world was clouded by her Pleasantville-esque town’s sheltering of her. You’d never fault her for it, but you should’ve known that you’d only taint her with your broken soul and wandering body and restless mind.</p><p>But what you knew above all of this was that despite every misgiving, despite everything you had done to her, despite every time she’d compare you to that giant she used to date, you’d come back to her. You’d always come back to her because for all her flaws and for all your hopeless insecurities, she was Rory and you were Jess and you’d keep colliding like a pair of masochistic planets craving nothing but the other through all the pain, and it was as simple as that.</p><p>Seeing her face for the first time after that phone call where her voice had lowered and cracked with the texture that could only be tears in her tone was a stab to the gut. She had cut her hair, she was wearing clothes you’d never seen, and she had a certain melancholy that weighed down and matured her voice, but she was Rory Gilmore.</p><p>It could have been her that had ripped his heart out and stomped on it instead of the other way around, but he knew he would follow her like some kind of love-sick puppy if she’d mumbled an apology, if her eyes even threatened to spill over with those precious diamond tears. </p><p>She wasn’t nearly as pathetic as you were. She had Yale, she had her mom, she had friends, she had a life that was busy without you. It was silly to have still had that shred of unwarranted hope that she’d drop everything for you. What would you be to her other than another desperate boy, another wanderlusting, insane soul that had screwed everything up between them? She’d know more love, happier times without you.</p><p>It was different for you. She was everything for you. Every carefree laugh and every secret broken sob that escaped your mouth into the pillows of a rundown motel, every cup of coffee that soured in your mouth remembering the taste of her kisses and every movie that you’d never be able to watch again, every copy of ‘Howl’ or ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ or ‘The Fountainhead’ that you’d never be able to even look at without your heart breaking, every girl you fumbled around with as a distraction that couldn’t compare. </p><p>You hated her for ruining so much for you. You loved her for a thousand more reasons.</p><p>You loved her the first time she swiveled around from her chair in her room, greeting you with a brilliant smile you were sure you didn’t deserve.</p><p>You loved her when her baby face was flushed rose from the chill, when her brown hair was wind-swept from the movement of the sleigh, when she was stewing at you for picking fights, and you definitely loved her when she couldn’t help but talk to you.</p><p>You loved her for the clandestine smiles and longing gazes across a room unbeknownst to Dean. </p><p>You loved her for spending an entire day with you(instead of with her jealous, clingy boyfriend that refused to trust her), possibly the day you fell in love with her, simply because she wanted to. </p><p>You loved her when she didn’t notice that stupid bracelet was gone for 2 weeks.</p><p>You loved her for letting you stay and eat dinner with her and Paris that day, and you even loved her when she had all but shoved you out the door to prevent a fight with Dean. You loved her for spending a full ten minutes talking to you in the diner the next morning, and you especially loved her when she unconsciously talked about spending time with Dean like a chore.</p><p>You loved her for telling you to turn right and you loved her for believing in you always and you loved her for not blaming you for that accident when the rest of the town thought she was capable of no wrong.</p><p>You loved her when she visited you in New York, skipped school for you, something so unlike her. You loved her for never pressing, and you loved her for being your favorite company whether it was to debate with or just listen to her ramble on passionately.</p><p>You loved her when she’d kissed you under the swaying trees clad in that blue dress that set off her eyes so well, and you loved that hollow feeling throughout your whole body when she’d left and hadn’t bothered to call or write for three months.</p><p>You loved her when you made out with Shane at the town’s deranged summer festival, pretending it was her back pocket you were slipping your hands into, pretending it was her gentle paper-cut hands around your neck and dragging their way across your face. </p><p>You loved her when you both stood sopping wet in the front yard of her neighbor’s house after the sprinkler wouldn’t turn off, the glimmer in her eyes looking like sapphire but infinitely more precious. </p><p>You loved her an unfathomable amount when she had admitted to you that the giant oaf of a boy had been right about her feelings, the golden light of a streetlamp near the darkness of your bridge illuminating her tired face with soft light. </p><p>You loved her forever after that, starting from the almost-kiss at Luke’s to her heart-broken and glassy-eyed glance back at you from the doors of the bus to the moment when her mouth had fallen open at your confession. </p><p>You loved her five minutes ago when you’d walked in on her and Lurch, even through your disgust that a married man was looking at her in that mushy, doe-eyed way of his and even through your confusion of what Rory had seen in someone who’s only personality trait was tall. </p><p>Worst of all, you loved her now as you made your way off the Yale campus where every ‘no’ she had uttered had cracked your heart again and again. She didn’t want to be with you, and it didn’t come as a surprise, but you were still stifling the threat of an undesired tear, still muffling the urge to scream loudly, violently into the dark sky. </p><p>You didn’t want to love her. You wished you could go back to the times when your biggest concern with girls was whether they were experienced or not, but try as you might, you could never shake Rory off of you. She had left her mark on every aspect of you indelibly and unforgettably.</p><p>Loving her was a funny thing, so full of innocent whimsy and fiery passion and a delicious, reverent kind of pain that manifested itself when you heard a high, broken voice call out from behind you.</p><p>“Jess, wait!”</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>